Comments for LBO News from Doug Henwood

Comment on Austerity & bankers’ coups: the NYC precedent by PSCI 232 - Comparative Political Economy · Quiz #1 and related matters for the week of 2/27…

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 19:40:13 +0000

[...] This short article provides a wider historical context of the political economy of debt, including the politics of the 1970s “bailout” of NYC. The excerpt is from a great book on how Wall Street operates, which is available for a free (and legal) download from the author’s site at: http://wallstreetthebook.com/ We will most likely read sections from it in the future. [...]

Comment on How to stop worrying about class by Rojo

Rojo — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:06:43 +0000

“No easy answer” liberals are as deluded as Thomas Frank’s fundamentalists. Maybe more so. At least the fundies get that there’s a conflict. That politics isn’t about performing some anova and creating a task force to implement.

Timely article. I was just now trying to remember who said that Obama’s worldview was something like “let’s get all the smart people together in a room”. Any help?

Comment on NPR hack apologizes for Wall Street by Rex Inutilis

Rex Inutilis — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:25:59 +0000

Couldn’t agree more with this analysis. I remember listening to a This American Life show which featured Davidson discussing the GFC. It started with some very interesting details about how the shit hit the fan but then basically became a slightly snarky apologia for the banks and the regulators; “hey, it’s a complex world! Do you really expect us to get every detail right all the time!?”

Totally vomitous and much more insidious given that it is not simply ‘liberal’ but that it is the ‘serious’ yet ‘funky’ show on the ‘serious’ yet ‘funky’ network

Comment on The limits of easy money by Protestation.org Blog » America’s failed promise of equal opportunity

Protestation.org Blog » America’s failed promise of equal opportunity — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:51:03 +0000

[...] the Democratic Party” for decades was once the commitment to full employment. The purpose behind guaranteeing everyone a job was not simply to provide Americans economic security; it was to elevate the overall bargaining [...]

Comment on How to stop worrying about class by SN

SN — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:41:31 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/us/more-conflict-seen-between-rich-and-poor-survey-finds.html?_r=1

Sabrina Tavernise deploys the “end on reactionary alibi” trope quite often.

Comment on The limits of easy money by America’s failed promise of equal opportunity | 5 Pillars of Wealth

America’s failed promise of equal opportunity | 5 Pillars of Wealth — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:15:16 +0000

Comment on How to stop worrying about class by Sunday Reading « zunguzungu

Sunday Reading « zunguzungu — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 03:45:10 +0000

[...] How to stop worrying about class: Today’s New York Times contains a fine example of how ideology works at the high end: report information that might trouble the established order, but conclude on a tranquilizing note that allows the comfortable reader to turn the page (or click “close tab”) without changing his or her worldview. Both functions are important. Outlets like the Times do report tons of important stuff that one would be hard-pressed to learn otherwise. But, as Alexander Cockburn put it long ago, a primary function of the bourgeois press is reassurance. [...]

Comment on How to stop worrying about class by purple

purple — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:51:31 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#United_States

Comment on How to stop worrying about class by purple

purple — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:47:25 +0000

Regarding Murray, the sad fact is the U.S. bourgeoisie only gave up on eugenics (now veiled in terms of class) because of its close association with the Nazi state. This is same reason that torture was considered out of bounds after World War 2. We won, and had to find ways to differentiate ourselves from the bad guys — indeed that was the entire purpose of the Nuremburg trials.

World War 2 (as well as the USSR) safely behind ‘us’ historically, the ruling class feels they can go back to business as usual. You will be chastised by Godwin’s law for mentioning otherwise.

Comment on How to stop worrying about class by bfuruta

bfuruta — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:16:47 +0000

On your characterization of James Heckman, I wish you had written it differently. Tavernise’s quote was also misleading. Heckman is a strong advocate for early childhood intervention, supported by government and private sources of funding. His argument is that considering limited resources, funding quality early childhood education is more effective than transfer payments. His position is “provide early intervention,” but it comes across as in Tavernise’s article and in your post as “don’t give poor people money.”

You also lump him together with the fresh water economists whose ideology overcomes evidence. Wrong again. He does good work and looks at the evidence. An example:

Heckman: There was a lot of resistance among some in the academic community at Chicago to the idea that the government had played such a powerful positive role. . . .
And to be honest, I found that some of my colleagues at Chicago were very hostile to this finding, and some remain so. Some want to believe that markets by themselves will solve problems like racial disparity. Markets do many useful things, but they did not solve the problem of race. Not in America. That’s probably heresy to admit it as a Chicago economist, but I became convinced that a doctrinaire notion that markets would solve the problem of discrimination is false. Civil rights legislation and civil rights activity played huge roles in eliminating overt segregation in the United States.

The interview is at http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=3278

From that same interview, on The Bell Curve,

Region: In 1995, you wrote a very strong critique of The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray’s book about IQ, genetics and ability, which argued that nature far outweighs nurture.

Heckman: . . . So, I thought the book was important in raising that issue, but it failed totally when it focused so much on genetic determination of ability. It had no hard evidence on genetics. The youngest person in the Herrnstein-Murray sample was 14 years of age at the start of the sample. By the time they are 14, people are pretty well formed and environments play a big role. The idea that a test score measured at age 14 was a good measure of genetic determinism is absurd.

Besharov must not be familiar with Heckman’s work, to put it kindly.